Tallahassee, FL -- The Tallahassee medical community was stunned Friday after state prosecutors charged local Cardiologist Stan Wellington with first degree murder for the cathing death of James Binkmann. Prosecutors claim the 79 year-old patient was killed by a four hour cathing rampage that ended with cardiac arrest just as a left pinky artery stent was being deployed.

Cardiologist arrested for murder after cathing patient to death.

Prosecutors released a transcript of the frantic 911 call they received from a float nurse in the cath lab the morning of the patient's death. "This is damning evidence," said State Prosecutor Denny Fleming.

911: 911. What is your emergency?Nurse: I'm at the hospital watching a doctor cath a patient to death. He's been here four hours and says he won't stop until he finds something to stent. I don't know what to do!911: We're sending officers now. Tell the doctor food just arrived in the doctor's lounge and get out of there now, before he tries to cath you next.

Dr. Wellington's defense attorney claims he was just doing what his patient requested. "Mr Binkmann told my client not to quit until he was sure nothing was wrong - that he didn't want to come back next week and do this all over again."

"While Mr Binkmann's death is unfortunate, Dr. Wellington was directed by the deceased not to repeat the failures of the Hospitalist doctors who had released him 'too early' his last seven admissions this year. He said he wanted everything done, so my client did everything."

After finding crystal clear coronary arteries, prosecutors claim the doctor went too far by cathing his eyes, tongue, neck, lungs, kidneys, spleen, gallbladder, colon, and even his scrotum before finally finding a clearly stentable lesion in the victim's left pinky.

"He was out of control. Like a vampire in search of blood. For God's sake, he cathed the poor man's testicles in search of stentable lesion", said a nurse who witnessed the scene unfold.

Dr Wellington has another theory on why his patient died on the cath table. "Those damn nephrologists canceled my Lasofloxalbuterol order and gave him fluid instead."

Oakbrook Terrace, IL -- Hospitals are up in arms again after The Joint Commission (TJC) on Monday started requiring all patients with too many armbands to be flagged with an armband for having too many armbands. Mark Chassin, President and Chief Executive Officer of TJC, applauded his organization for taking action against his organization's failed policies.

Too many armbands? There's an armband for that!

"I'm proud The Joint Commission is finally taking a stand against The Joint Commission for continuing to ignore all the unintended consequences of their regulations," said Dr. Chassin.

Doctors and nurses have been telling authorities for years that too many patient armbands are a safety hazard, but those complaints had fallen on deaf ears until last week when 87 year old ICU patient Pat Swanson of Denver, Colorado underwent emergent bilateral upper extremity amputations at Great Scotts Medical Center shortly after 52 armbands cut off circulation during an anasarca storm.

"After a root cause analysis, we determined the PROBABLY A PALLIATIVE CARE CANDIDATE armband placed an hour before the event finally took her arms over the edge," said Dr. Steven Johnson, the Hospitalist on duty when this tragic but totally foreseeable event occurred.

"When she was admitted 24 days ago, she only had three arm bands, but if you do the math, she gained just over 2 armbands per day in the ICU that nobody noticed. In retrospect, the patient telling us 'My arms are too heavy with armbands to lift a spoon and eat' should have clued us into an emerging problem, but we were too busy filling out FMLA papers for multiple family members everyday to head her cry for help," said Dr. Johnson.

In the last four years, The Joint Commission says the average number of patient armbands has skyrocketed from 3 to over 17, as more and more patient characteristics demand armband worthy status, adversely affecting everyone in the hospital. Nursing students are constantly pulling the code blue cord in an abundance of caution after being unable to palpate a radial pulse. Medical students have no idea what pronator drift is anymore. Phlebotomists are being retrained to perform bedside carotid cut-downs for routine blood draws. Even administrators are overwhelmed with committees trying to solve the excessive armband problem.

"At one point we had 17 committees - all working independently and without communication - each trying to come up with a solution that nobody else liked, resulting in 17 other committees to sort it all out," said Dr Johnson.

What came out of these painful meetings was nothing short of genius at Great Scotts Medical Center. "We hired a hospital seamstress to convert all those armbands into one giant sash for the women and a handsome fashion belt for the men. Patients love it and it's a great conversation piece for family. Plus, as an added bonus, we have the highest satisfaction scores in the universe! Thank you Joint Commission for being so helpful," said Dr Johnson.

VA Hospitals - Memorial Day is a time to remember our service men and women who died while serving in the armed forces, but it's also a time to pay respect to the thousands of veterans who die every day in our VA hospitals all across the country.

Memorial Day honors veterans who lost their lives in a VA hospital

Billy Smith and his family are using today to remember World War II Veteran Granpa Jim, shot 17 times in war, who passed away three years ago at their local VA hospital after undergoing routine bunyan surgery and never making it out alive. "We dropped him off for a routine surgery and we never heard from him again," said Billy, who says the VA still has no record of him ever getting admitted in the first place.

The Smith Family is not alone. Hundreds of thousands of families use Memorial Day to remember their fallen VA hospital heroes who went in to get routine medical care and ended up paying the price with their lives.

For many families, Memorial Day is a painful reminder of the lack of accountability in the VA system, were employees can't be fired even in the most egregious of circumstances.

"When I was a resident, I was trying to save the life of my ICU patient crashing on the ventilator, and the x-ray technologist said he wasn't going to come in on a Friday night to do a stat chest x-ray because he lived 30 minutes a way and it was snowing outside," said Dr. Stanley Franklin, an internist who knows how hard it is to get anyone fired from the VA for gross incompetence. "That place breeds death."

"Then there's the time my MI patient waited six days for a cardiac echo because the echo tech was on vacation for a week. Oh and then there's that one time my patient bled to death after a nurse stuck him 87 times trying to get an IV started. The list goes on and on."

For many veterans the real war is not on foreign grounds with bombs and bullets, it's fighting for their lives every time they enter a VA hospital. Please remember to honor your fallen VA patients who gave their lives so some VA employee could instead enjoy a fine potluck lunch.

Much has been said about patients who leave against medical advice, but little has been described about patients who stay against medical advice. When a hospital setting is no longer appropriate for a patient, a physician will recommend discharge to the next appropriate level of care. For most well adjusted patients, the hospital is the last place in the world they want to be, but for a select subset of customers, the hospital is the only place they would like to be.

Staying Against Medical Advice is your right!

The average adult probably finds it hard to believe some patients actually want to stay in the hospital longer than necessary, but it's true.

Staying longer than necessary does come with risk, including hospital acquired infections, medication errors and other unspecified iatrogenic badness. But, try explaining that to the clientele refusing to leave and many doctors risk getting a 4 instead of a 5 on their patient satisfaction experience scorecard.

Remember, an unsatisfied patient is a hazard to a hospital's health. With Medicare paying hospitals these days partly based on the patient experience, hospitals and their healthcare providers must walk an often impossible line between doing what's good for the patient and what's good for the patient experience.

In fact, Medicare believes so strongly in a patient's right to refuse discharge and stay against medical advice, they have a form that allows the patient to stay against medical advice and have their discharge decision appealed by some unknown entity with an unknown degree deep within the Medicare Fort.

So why do some patients want to stay against medical advice and risk all the complications of continued hospital care? Here is a Top 15 List of real quotes from patients who were allowed to stay against medical advice by hospitals fearful of not getting 5/5 on their patient satisfaction scores.

"You have the best Dilaudid of any hospital I've ever been to."

"My daughter ain't going anywhere until you have her pseudoseizures under control."

"My ride is out of town until Tuesday of next week."

"Someone stole my Oxycotton script and I'm not leaving until you write me another one."

"My husband got admitted to the hospital yesterday and I want to stay here until he goes home too. Can he stay in my room too?"

"I'm lonely at home and my kids never call."

"The chicken cordon bleu here is amazing."

"I have a call button. Why would I want to go home?"

"I've been having abdominal pain for 20 years and I'm not leaving until you figure it out."

Rosemont, IL - David Teuscher, President of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), confirmed yesterday a universal H&P that just needs to be signed by the surgeon is the best selling product offered by the society.

"The H&P is by far the best selling product our society has ever had!" said Dr. Teuscher. "As an ortho doc myself, I have personally struggled through H&Ps my entire professional life. I wish I had these twenty years ago."

Ortho is thrilled with their new universal H&P template!

With Hospitalists increasingly refusing to do 'Need pre-op H&P' consults, ortho doctors have increasingly found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to complete an H&P, especially ones on patients with no actual medical problems.

Dr. Stitch Ansaw, a prominent orthopaedic surgeon who admits he doesn't know what H&P actually stands for, says the AAOA template has already saved at least one of his patients from needless suffering.

"I hadn't done an H&P for at least 10 years. Last week a Hospitalist said they couldn't get to my stat 5 a.m. pre-op H&P consult for least 30 minutes because of three code blues they were running simultaneously at three different hospitals. That's just ridiculous. Here my 48 year old patient with no medical problems and stable ring-finger OA is suffering needlessly and they're too busy to help me do paperwork for surgery. Because of the AAOA template, I was able to get this H&P thing done without delay and my lady is now on the road to recovery."

Contrarily, Hospitalists were thrilled to learn of the society's plan to help surgeons complete required pre-operative work. Dr. Burke Kealey, President of the Society of Hospital Medicine, commended AAOS officials for their proactive approach to helping their members not look so helpless in the eyes of everyone around them.

"I'm actually quite surprised orthopaedic surgeons need help completing an H&P. Most of them completed four years of medical school and at least five years of residency training, which is two years more than even the brightest internist. You'd think they would have picked up a few H&P pointers from the medicine guys in those nine years," said Dr. Kealey.

Dr. Kealey admits he has little compassion for his poor ortho colleagues. "I watched an ortho colleague the other day struggle for two hours trying to complete the universal H&P form while mumbling 'H&Ps are for little people' the whole time. All he had to do was sign the form and be done."

For a scant $1,799 annual fee, ortho doctors have been promised unlimited access to this copy write protected level 3 ortho H&P. "Our members will never have to worry about doing an H&P ever again," said Dr. Teuscher from his 4 million dollar condo in Maui, paid for by AAOS H&P proceeds.

"I think we can probably charge 10X that amount and still not lose any sales."